


So far Yakuza is so much fun on the ps2. I love the heat actions, like throwing a whole guy into a koi pond.
Hello everyone. Hope everyone had a good week. I was out of town for most of it for Thanksgiving so I didn't game much beyond some Balatro on my phone. Hope everyone has a great week!
Was in a comment section about designing games to respect the player's time and mentioned I never finished Hollow Knight because it makes you fight the final boss again each time you want to give the secret boss another shot. ... read full post
You ever play a game and it's all competently made and such but somehow it just feels 20% off for what it's supposed to be? And then you play something else of similar genre and it just feels SO much better to play. ... read full post

My population was reduced by 75%, which I think was benefited by having hospitals in as many locations with over 120k population (the Yucatan is very dense) as possible. Which was like, seven. I could have maybe done more but you really need your cabinet developing the high pop provinces because they also need 20 development for a hospital ... read full post

Played this recently after hearing good things. It broadly has the "build cozy community in late-stage capitalism" vibe. The early game (first 3 hours?) is excellent and pairs very well with the game mechanics. There is a real feeling of living on the edge even though the risk of failure is allegedly faked (the game isn't a roguelike). However, after that you become powerful enough that the survival mechanics are rendered irrelevant; you have enough money to buy as much food as you want, and can easily forage or buy scrap material to repair yourself. Thus the latter two thirds relies heavily on its story, which is really a bit one-note. The fundamental fantasy is that you can solve everybody's problems, making you this bizarre superhuman space-station-spanning force. This works against the overall plot that is about being a marginalized outsider building community to carve out a place for a small life in the cosmos, because you can singlehandedly remake the reality of the entire space station. Interesting conflicts within this new community you have made are not really ever explored, and it's entirely stuck in the wholesome solarpunk commune vs. giant menacing intergalactic corporations rut. Even the late-game refugee plot (ripped from today's headlines!) does not fully explore the interesting angle of how a humanistic system can handle refugees when life support systems could be authentically taxed by their arrival. I think here of The Dispossessed, where (spoilers to follow) a planet-wide famine is addressed in a messy but basically equitable way. ... read full post